


in the quiet

by izabellwit



Category: RWBY
Genre: Banter, Bonding, Character Development, Developing Friendships, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Humor, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Post-Volume 7 (RWBY), Road to Vacuo, Sharing a Body, Speculation, Spoilers: Volume 7 (RWBY), a la Clover, annoying as it is, in which tired wizard man deals with having human emotions, meanwhile ruby and oscar continue to be absolutely iconic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:28:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23297788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/izabellwit/pseuds/izabellwit
Summary: The group has saved Atlas and is en route to Vacuo, but with the danger now behind them, other troubles finally catch up.(Or: in which Oz struggles with this whole ‘trusting’ business, Oscar does damage control, and Ruby fights name formality. Change is all in the little steps.)
Relationships: Oscar Pine & Ruby Rose, Ozpin & Oscar Pine, Ozpin & Ruby Rose
Comments: 36
Kudos: 203





	in the quiet

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by a great many things, but mainly a thought I had on post-Atlas stuff. Because... I mean, let's be real. Everything that's happening in Atlas is literally Oz's Worst Nightmare come to horrible, bloody life. And while clearly Oz is never one to break in the moment... well, I imagine it'd definitely hit him in the after.
> 
> And so! Here is my attempt at the 'after.' 
> 
> Oz's pov frustrates me terribly, which is probably why I keep writing in it. I will figure you out, wizard man!! Even if I have to write another ten fics to do it. 
> 
> Final note: Ozpin/Ozma is referred to as 'Oz' here, because reasons. 
> 
> Hope you guys enjoy!!!

It’s almost funny, how it all ends— after everything, after all the fighting and the screaming and the dying, they leave Atlas behind them in silence. 

Not quite a victory. Not quite defeat. They’ve lost more than they could ever afford to lose, but they haven’t fallen— the city in the sky, still sitting there among the clouds; Mantle, gutted but breathing, still surviving, finally safe. They leave the city behind in a lone airship that barely fits the lot of them, Penny as their newest addition, and when Oscar takes his seat beside Nora, head pillowed against her arm, he and Oz pass out almost at exactly the same time. It’s quiet. It’s _done._ It’s finally okay for them to rest. 

For now. 

It’s the hum of the airship that finally awakens Oz, hours later, when Atlas is gone from view and only the sky shows out their windows. His head aches— or rather, _their_ head aches— and Oz pries open their eyes with a muted wince, leaning away from a snoring Nora Valkyrie, sitting up against the wall.

He blinks, slowly, looking out over their group. Maria is still at the helm— eyes fixed on the windshield, and when she glances back at him she gives only the barest of nods and then turns back to the controls. The rest of the group is dead to the world, clustered on the floor and leaning against one another, so deeply asleep it almost disturbs him. If he couldn’t hear their breathing…

Oz shakes the thought away, inhaling sharply, a little more awake now. In the back of their mind, Oscar is quiet, awake but not really aware, half-way dead and dozing to the world. He’s not quite asleep, but… Oz lets him rest. He knows this is as close as Oscar will get to sleep without tempting nightmares, and in this, they are in full agreement: neither of them wants nightmares right now. Neither of them is ready to face what monstrosities will arise from the mix of Oscar’s fears and Oz’s horror trove of memories. It has been a long, terrible week. 

And it is over, Oz reminds himself, a constant mantra. It has been a long, awful week, but it is over. Salem has been diverted, at least for now; Atlas still stands, and so too does Mantle. And James…

Oz closes their eyes. No, he decides. He won’t think about that. Not yet, at any rate. _It’s not the time,_ as Oscar likes to say, whenever too many problems pile on at once. Oz is trying to reassure himself. The task is done. He is alive, and so are all the others. They have done the best they could, and now they are finally leaving Atlas behind them. 

It’s fine. Everything is… just fine.

_What…?_

Oh, damn it all.

Oz drifts back, irritated with himself, and it is Oscar who blinks open their eyes and squints into the dark. The boy’s mind is blurry with exhaustion— but he is, unfortunately, awake.

_I’m sorry,_ Oz offers, biting back a sigh. So much for letting the boy rest. _I didn’t mean to wake you._

Oscar hums, seemingly unbothered; he leans back against the wall and yawns into his hands. “It’s fine. You didn’t, really. And I don’t know if what I was doing even counts as sleeping…” His voice is quiet, barely a mumble. Oscar presses his palms against his eyes. “Felt more like my brain just died.”

Across the airship, a quiet giggle. “Oh, like passing out?”

Surprise flickers through them both. Oscar blinks and turns. “...Ruby?”

On the other side of the airship, sitting beside Penny Polendina and Weiss Schnee, Ruby Rose gives a small wave in reply. Her smile is a flash in the dark. She looks almost half-asleep— as bleary-eyed as Oscar, but less dazed. Had she been awake this whole time? The thought startles Oz. He hadn’t noticed.

“Morning!” Her head tilts. She looks momentarily sheepish. “Whoops, did I startle you?” 

“A little,” Oscar whispers back, but he’s smiling too. Then the boy blinks, and Oz can feel his thoughts stall. “Wait, it’s morning?” 

“Uh…”

The children both turn to look out the windows. Beyond the scraped glass of the airship porthole, the sky is dark and star-lit, heavy swaths of shadowy clouds wisping by. The moon is entirely hidden behind the fog. Oz, for one, cannot tell the time at all.

“I have no idea,” is what Oscar says.

Ruby Rose giggles at that, quiet agreement. From the controls, in a whisper that is both amused and warning, Maria says, “It’s three A.M. It’s not anything.”

“Ohhhh,” Ruby Rose says agreeably, in a hushed and self-assured whisper under her breath. “Void time.”

...Oz cannot exactly argue with that.

Oscar snorts, then chokes, stifling his giggle in his elbow. Ruby Rose grins at him and stands up, gingerly prying away from Penny Polendina’s death grip on her arm and slipping past the sleeping and unmoving bodies of the others to settle next to Oscar on the seats. On his other side, Nora Valkyrie scoffs in her sleep and slumps. Oscar and Ruby Rose share a grin. She elbows him lightly. “You couldn’t sleep either?”

“Kind of. Oz woke up first, and then…”

Oz winces.

“It doesn’t matter,” Oscar informs him, still quiet. “I wasn’t… like I said. Didn’t really feel like sleeping. Just—” He sighs. “I don’t know. Everything feels slow, right now.” 

“Like a shroud,” Ruby Rose agrees, but she sounds a little more subdued, and she draws her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around her legs. She looks out over the others, and Oscar looks too; Oz peers through their eyes briefly, if only to quiet the nagging worry at his chest. The others are all quiet, all seemingly asleep—or close to it—and no one seems in pain from their lingering injuries, at any rate, and even Qrow seems a little more restful than before…

Oscar must catch on to his train of thought, because his gaze fixes on Qrow too. He frowns, thoughtful. “Hey, Ruby. Do you think…?”

She looks at Qrow too. For a moment she seems confused— but then her eyes linger on her uncle, and understanding dawns. She bites her lip, and for a moment her eyes seem shadowed, too old for her face.

“I don’t know,” Ruby Rose says, a whisper drawn thin and quiet. “I mean… I think he’ll be okay? He’s been… um, worse. Before. So this isn’t really so bad, in comparison.” She folds into herself, and rubs at her arms, as though cold. Her lips press. “But— that kind of makes it hurt more, though.” 

Oscar blinks. Oz too is puzzled. “What do you…?”

“It’s weird, but… I feel like he almost expected this to happen,” she confesses to Oscar, and her voice is so low they have to strain to hear her. “M-maybe, um, maybe not Clover dying like that, but like he was waiting for…”

“The disappointment?”

Her voice is very hushed. “The loss.”

“Oh,” Oscar says, quietly. The boy seems at a loss what to say; his eyes turn down, lips pressed tight. He leans against Ruby gingerly, and she looks away from Qrow for just a moment, smiling weakly, looking grateful. 

Oz is distant, though, and aching, and something about it all curdles in his chest. _He’s been worse._ But Oz—Oz cannot remember a time when Qrow was quite like this, not even after Raven left and Summer died. Qrow has been grief-stricken before, yes, but not this _resigned_ to it. In a way it is a relief—that Qrow has turned to anger instead of breaking, that he has chosen to keep moving forward despite it all. But that Oz has no idea when this choice took place, that he, apparently, wasn’t _there_ for it… 

Oz is not blind to the implications. The memory rises in him, sharp as bile. _Meeting you was the worst luck of my life._

Yes. Yes, Qrow has been worse, hasn’t he? He’s—been through worse. Of course he has learned. Of course he was ready for it. Oz’s lies had likely taught him very well how to deal with crushing disappointment.

It is not the first time Oz has been confronted with the aftereffects of his actions, his choices; in all the thousands of years he’s lived, he’s had to face his own faults again and again and again. But it never gets any easier. It never hurts any less. Everything he has done, everything he has learned, all these _lives,_ and still—Oz could not even do this right. _Still_ , he seems to have learned nothing at all… or, perhaps, he learned the wrong lesson.

But even now, Oz doesn’t know where it all went wrong. He doesn’t know what he could have done differently— can’t even imagine it. There are no easy answers to any of this. There’s no clear path for what Oz should have done, only the knowledge that what he did end up doing was wrong. 

And it _galls_ at him. It gnaws at him. It is a doubt that had festered in Atlas and now grows with every passing minute of peace, with every second he has to finally think, and see the situation in full. The thoughts are many, and they are spinning. Is this— what Oz is doing now, this new approach— the right choice? The right path to take? Can Oz be sure? Can he _afford_ to be wrong? And if he is wrong, again, then— 

“Stop,” Oscar says, suddenly, and Oz snaps back to awareness. His train of thought cuts off, and for a moment Oz is nowhere, nothing, blank and startled by the interruption. The boy has opened his eyes again; Oscar is frowning up at the ceiling, brow furrowed. “There’s no use regretting what can’t be changed,” Oscar says, under his breath. “You _— we_ just need to try better, next time.”

Oz is silent for a long moment. He struggles to regain his bearings, gathering up the edges of his spiraling thoughts. _I… did not mean for you to hear all that._

“I didn’t. Not really. But this thing goes both ways, doesn’t it?” Oscar touches briefly over his heart. “I can feel you panicking.”

Well, Oz considers. Fuck. 

Ruby Rose nudges Oscar with her elbow, looking a little alarmed. “Are you… no, is he…?”

“Dunno. It’s just loud.” He pauses. “Oz?”

Oz feels like sighing. He reaches out, almost, a sort of mental gesture, and Oscar frowns up at the ceiling and then goes distant, falling back. Oz slips into control with a sharp breath and a hiss through their teeth, and sits up straight, adjusting. The battle in Atlas has left bruises on Oscar and Oz both, and he rolls out their wrist as the pain filters through, waiting to adjust to the sharp sting of their healing wounds. 

“I am fine,” he says, once he’s settled, and links their hands as he leans back against the airship wall, missing his old chair. The downside of traveling by airship is that there is nowhere comfortable to sit. “Just… thinking.”

Ruby Rose blinks at their switch but doesn’t much react beyond leaning back to give Oz his space. She tilts her head. “…Good,” she says, though she doesn’t look like she believes him. Curse Oscar’s open honesty; anything Oz says now will be taken as a front now that she’s already had confirmation he was spiraling. “Um… do you wanna talk about it?”

Ha, ha. “No.”

“I mean, you don’t have to talk to me, that might be weird. Maria! Maria’s like, almost your age. You could talk to Maria.”

In the back of their mind, Oscar is choking on a laugh. 

Oz closes their eyes. “Thank you, Miss Rose,” he says, dryly. If nothing else, this absolute mess of a conversation is serving as a lovely distraction. “But please, I beg of you— can we not?”

She grins. “But—”

He gives her a look.

“Right, right, dropping it.”

“Hm.” He doubts it. She is friends with Nora Valkyrie, after all; this is going to come up again, he thinks, and once more at his expense. That Oscar is their friend has apparently given all the teenagers free rein to tease Oz as well, and he has no idea what to do about it. (And will also never, ever admit that he finds it funny.) “I’m sure.”

She snickers, but is quick to muffle it, though she’s still smiling when she lowers her hand. “Why do you do that, anyway?”

Oz blinks. Oscar, in the back of their mind, gives an impression like tilting his head. “Hm?”

“Miss Rose,” she mimics. “Mister Arc, Miss Valkyrie…” 

“It’s polite,” Oz says, wry.

“Well, yeah, but it feels kind of…” She makes a motion with her hand, then frowns. “I dunno.”

 _I’ve noticed that too._ Oscar sounds thoughtful. When Oz turns his attention inward, surprised, the boy almost seems to start. _Well, you do it a lot._ _You always refer to people with their full names when we talk, or with the titles. Even with the others! Well, not_ ** _Qrow_** _, but everyone else…_

“…I have honestly never thought much about it,” Oz says, a little thrown by the observation. “Truly, no harm is meant.”

Ruby Rose shrugs. “Well, you can just call me Ruby, if you want! Miss Rose is… _yech_.”

“…Hm.”

“Oh, you’re making a face. Never mind.”

Oz winces, turning their head away, and waves a hand. “No, no,” he says, just barely remembering to keep their voice low. If the others start waking up, this really will become just… too much for words. “I simply—”

He stops, uncharacteristically frustrated. He doesn’t really have the words to explain it, and doesn’t really understand it himself. He had not always been so strict on formality, but after Ozpin’s death… and he has done this for a very long time. It is a lingering echo from a bygone era, the time of fairytales and magic; names had power then, and Ozma had known that well. And Oz cannot deny there’s a comfort in it all, in the formality, in the distance. The separation.

But then. If he thinks about it like that… Oz understands a little of where Oscar and Ruby Rose are coming from, too. Because the distance is comforting, but… perhaps that was always the problem. The distance. Can they trust him at all if they don’t know him? 

Oscar speaks slow and thoughtful. _Can they betray you if you don’t know_ **_them_ ** _?_

Oz takes a moment to remember how to breathe. “That’s—”

_Sorry. Sorry. I… I didn’t mean it as an accusation. Just a thought._

Still. The words have hit hard. Oz exhales slowly through their teeth, wrestling with his composure, and when he turns back to Ruby Rose—to Ruby— his expression is steady even if their hands still tremble. 

“No,” Oz says, finally, with difficulty. He gives in to temptation, and reaches for their cane; turns it in their hands without extending it, drawing strength from the weight of it in their palms. “No, you’re probably right. By this time—after all this time— perhaps it _is_ odd.” Something in him steadies, settles. “I will… attempt differently.”

Ruby still looks worried. “S-sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean—um, to upset you, I was just wondering—”

“It's fine.”

“But—”

“I know,” he says gently. “And it is all right. I… I have been reflecting on a lot, these past few days. Weeks. ...Months. And old habits make new troubles seem easier.” He turns the cane again in their hands, tracing gloved fingers over the engravings. “But not all old habits are worth keeping.”

Besides. Oz has promised them— promised Oscar, especially— to do differently. To try. Maybe he doesn’t know where he went wrong before— what he could have changed, what he should have done… but Oz can do this. He can change. He can speak to them as equals, as people fighting the same war he is, as allies and friends and students. He can trust them. Or at the very least, he can try to. 

“I… I guess so…” Ruby searches their face. “Are you sure?”

He almost smiles. Her concern is unneeded, but her kindness is appreciated. “Yes,” Oz assures. He taps the cane with a finger, thoughtful. “Besides. It will probably serve as a welcome distraction, Mis—”

_Ruby._

“— hm.”

This, at least, gets the girl to grin. “Uh… you’ll get it eventually?”

“My point exactly,” Oz murmurs. The weight in the air has lifted— some of the darkness gone with this choice, with the echo of laughter— and when Oz steps back out of control again he goes with some measure of peace, and Oscar sighs in relief as he blinks his eyes open. When Ruby gives him a questioning look, the boy shrugs one shoulder and gives a crooked smile. 

“We’ll be fine.”

She blows out a heavy breath. “Good!”

“Finally,” says Maria, from up front. Both Oscar and Ruby jump. “Talk talk talk, yeesh. It’s three in the morning! We should all be asleep!”

“Maria, you can’t go to sleep, you’re driving the plane.”

“Rub it in, why don’t you.” She glances back at them. “But honestly, children. And disembodied wizard, I suppose. We got out! Atlas is behind us.” She turns back to the controls. “Rest, all of you. Things will be better in the morning. We’ll talk about everything then, when we’ve got our heads on straight.”

There’s a pause. Ruby blinks back to coherence first. “Uh… yes, ma’am.”

_She is right, you know. Nightmares or not, we do need to sleep._

“You’re the one who woke me up,” Oscar says, without heat. He rolls his eyes and offers Ruby a smile. “Good night, I guess?”

“I still think it’s technically morning…” But Ruby slips to her feet and heads back to her previous spot, eyes a little brighter. She nudges Qrow’s foot as she passes, and giggles when he shifts. 

How funny these children are, Oz thinks. How resilient. He had always known they had potential, but… for all that they have been drawn into this war, he cannot help but be forever thankful they haven’t yet lost their spark because of it.

He has done so many things wrong, in these thousands of years. But if Oscar can still smile, and Ruby Rose can still play tricks— if all of these children can laugh despite everything they’ve faced— then perhaps Oz has done some things right after all. 

Perhaps he can continue to.

The hum of the airship that first woke him drones soft and constant. Oscar is already out. Ruby is silent again. The quiet darkness of the airship presses against him, but this time it feels almost comforting rather than stifling. If Oz listens, he can hear the soft exhale of their breaths. The children. Qrow. All alive. Hurting, yes… but still in one piece. 

And this time, when Oz fades out into sleep, it is almost with a smile. 

**Author's Note:**

> Oz strikes me as the kind of person who lets themself feel emotions Exactly Once, and then shoves them away with a vengeance. Go away, rising breakdown. Back in the cupboard with you. Shoo, shoo.
> 
> I always found Oz's formality with the group interesting, mainly because the longer time goes on, the odder it seems. While in Beacon he was willing to use first names and such, he seems to drop that off entirely in volumes 5 and 6, and seems to go completely formal... which is strange, considering even the STUDENTS are now calling him 'Oz' instead of 'Professor' like they used to. Part of it is just mannerisms and manners, I think... but it always seemed very distancing, too. And very weird to me, that he'd get _more_ formal the longer he knows them.
> 
> Those are my thoughts, anyhow. Let me know what you think on this! I'm always down to talk theory, haha. 
> 
> [If you wanna rec this fic, you can reblog it here!!](https://izaswritings.tumblr.com/post/613489317246124032/title-in-the-quiet-fandom-rwby-synopsis-the) Also, if you have any questions or just want to talk, [my tumblr](http://izaswritings.tumblr.com) is always open!!
> 
> Any thoughts?


End file.
